Going to the Devil: The Impeachment of 1868

Andrew Johnson, a southerner and opposition-party leader on Abraham Lincoln's National Union Party ticket of 1868, was intoxicated at his swearing-in only 41 days before being elevated to the presidency. He swiftly promoted the restoration of states' rights and white privilege even as racial violence erupted across the post-Civil War South. As the death toll rose, Johnson blamed his troubles on an alleged conspiracy of political enemies in Congress. And he spoke aloud about hanging some of them. One of Johnson's holdover cabinet members from the Lincoln administration, War Secretary Edwin Stanton, clashed with the new president, barricading himself in the war office. As he did so, Congress drafted legislation to protect Stanton, and lure Johnson into the trap of violating the "high crimes and misdemeanors" language of the Constitution. "The coincidence that the impeachment trial took place in a presidential election year is striking," attorney David O. Stewart says in the documentary. Some of Johnson's political opponents feared imposing impeachment as a potential remedy in place of public ballots. But congressional majority leaders opted for a constitutional coup d'état. "They just felt Johnson's abuses, his wrong conduct, his violation of the way a president should act, had piled up. And I think they felt the eyes of history on them," Stewart says The decision to proceed with articles of impeachment in the House-and a trial in the Senate-was fraught and controversial, and undergirded by rumors of conspiracy. "Congress is disregarding the will of the president. The president is disregarding the will of Congress. And you've got the secretary of War arguably in mutiny. This is a conflict of a type we've never actually had any other time in our history," says Stewart. Literary critic Brenda Wineapple says, "You have a country that's broken apart and that is trying to find its way in an entirely new era. It was a wonderful opportunity. A second founding. A second chance. A rebirth. The fact it didn't happen is tragic, of course. But there was a moment-a crossroads-and the country could have gone in a different direction. It almost did. It's important to remember that. It's also important to remember why it didn't."